


I Need You Here

by LadyLetterbomb



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2020, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Multiple Endings, OKAY THE MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH THING IS COMPLICATED, One Shot, Sad Ending, Schrodinger's Ending, because i define the different outcomes and the cat is physically neither---, because this has, hospitals are mentioned if that's a thing with you, it's not quite a, most other triggers you could think of for "major character death" too, this is dan's fault for saying "kill me off instead of Phil" that one time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:53:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26291446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLetterbomb/pseuds/LadyLetterbomb
Summary: My prompt that I decided to do myself:“A fanfic where it becomes increasingly unclear if Dan’s dead or not, like “Aeroplanes” by The Brobecks, but minus the aeroplanes. (Or not. You can keep them if you want.)”Is he actually dead? Or is something else going on? Well, I wrote two endings for a reason."The picture is of the two of them, a selfie. They’re young and healthy and perfect and in love and beautiful and beautiful together and sohappyand how could any universe be cruel enough to separate them, to cut this short?"ft. my ability to bring back paragraph formats once and call it a motif. also four emojis, the most I've ever used.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Kudos: 8





	I Need You Here

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously not real, but the general timeline of updates is also very muddled.  
> I’m sorry the tenses are a bit messy — I switched when I was ¾ of the way done and tried my best to put together a proper framework. Just know that I did some things for the Literary Aesthetic™, if not logical sense.

55 days have past since anyone has seen Dan Howell. Anyone on the internet, at least. Phil Lester hasn’t seen him in eleven days, eleven more days than the internet people looking at the picture would think.

The picture is of the two of them, a selfie. They’re young and healthy and perfect and in love and beautiful and beautiful together and so _happy_ and how could any universe be cruel enough to separate them, to cut this short?  
  
It’s a tragedy. Phil’s not a fan of tragedies. At least not in real life — it’s not like he and Dan had specifically avoided watching them. 

_Dan_. Phil can remember his laugh and his smile and his face and his voice, but remembering them now makes him terrified that one day, he won’t be able to, if their exit from his life is forever. When they met, what, 11 years ago? _God, that’s forever_. When they met, Dan had been the one who was going to be saved, but in the end they both became everything to each other. They’d changed and grown up. But Dan still fit perfectly in his arms, and Phil’s arms still felt like home the most out of everything to Dan. Together. Perfect. Inseparable. 

Phil _knows_ that without Dan he’s still Phil Lester, Youtuber and general geek, but he feels like he’s just a boy in a house, who likes things sometimes and maybe is funny. _Existential crises are supposed to be Dan’s thing._ And the house is too empty. Oh God, the house is _painfully_ empty. It hurts every time he’s about to ask Dan what he wants to eat and it hurts every time he’s about to ask Dan what he wants to watch and it hurts when Dan doesn’t ask him anything at all and it hurts when Phil can’t tell him the pun he just thought up and it hurts when he doesn’t hear Dan laugh at it and it hurts every time Dan’s being too quiet and Phil looks over and he isn’t there, _he isn’t there anymore._

  
  


The first week afterwards, Phil still tried to make a video. In retrospect, it was stupid; of course he couldn’t make a video while sobbing. He got as far as turning on the camera before realizing Phil wasn’t going to magically become AmazingPhil, camera ready and chipper, smiling and laughing and just enjoying life in general. Phil doesn’t usually look at his image above the camera — his ability to make consistent eye contact with a camera becomes exemplary once one notices it — except right at the beginning to make sure everything is centered properly and he looks okay.  
  
Phil didn’t look okay in any way: He had brushed his hair, but some time in between preparation and filming and breaking down in tears again he had mussed it up. His expression was broken and tragic and maybe a little bit lost. He tried to smile. It was a smile in desperate need of comfort — the exact opposite of the comfort he tries to give his viewers.  
  
He could only hope that AmazingPhil wasn’t gone along with Dan. He shouldn’t be: AmazingPhil had existed before, and recently without, Dan. Phil was the one that AmazingPhil couldn’t exist without. The problem was that Dan’s sudden absence had Phil put Phil so out of sorts he didn’t feel like himself. 

  
  


He tweeted the next day to explain why there wasn’t going to be a video. Phil misses uploads occasionally without explaining, which always leads to an influx of theories on his and Dan’s latest plans. (Most prominently moving. Always with the moving. Dan had joked, “Wow Phil, they must really hate this house if they’re so eager to get us out of it.” Phil smiles at the memory but also feels like crying again.) He felt it would be misdirection to let that happen this time. “Sorry guys no video this week and maybe not for a couple more. I wanted to let you know ahead of time because I’m not doing so well right now. Don’t worry it’s not forever 💙💚”  
  
He had stuck around for a few of the replies: There were many variations of “you go, take care of your mental health!” and “do whatever’s best for you! we can wait haha,” a couple accented with “Phil I wasn’t worrying at all until you said ‘it’s not forever’ 😱 I wasn’t thinking that at all!” A “guys the hearts it’s his signature colors i’m dying awww” made him feel a little better, but the ones saying “Whatever’s going on, I’m sure you and Dan and work through it! Take your time! <3 <3 <3” didn’t land the way they were supposed to. He replied to his own tweet, “Thanks for your understanding and support, I love you all 💗” before closing the laptop. 

  
  


It's day eleven. Still. Apparently reliving the last two days doesn’t take much time. Phil doesn’t know what else to do. 

He did plenty of things every day, things without Dan or at least merely by his side. He just can’t think of them. All he can think of is Dan, in that chair, on that couch, lying face-down on that… futon? Funny how you can look at something every day and not know it’s name. Funny how you can look at the same face every day and still want to look at it longer, want to look at it every single day until the end of your days. Funny how you can be in love for years to the point where it just becomes part of your life, yet still stays special. 

Phil hasn’t given much thought to how much crying is too much before, but he’s certainly passed the limit in the past week. Then again, it feels justified: Dan is the most important thing to him in the whole world, and for this to happen...

He remembers the moment. So much noise, with everybody screaming. The car, the brakes — he forces it out of his mind. He tries to play music, but it reminds him of Dan and it’s not even a sad song. Phil gets a glass of water and switches to a band that Dan never liked much. 

He goes online a little, and it helps a little — funnily enough (it’s not really funny), depending on the mood of the fandom, they treat Dan like he’s dead or talk about DanAndPhilGAMES like it broke up with them. But then he sees a post pointing out how he leans to the side when he’s laughing, even when Dan’s not around, and suddenly Phil’s missing him so badly again. _Alright, time to get off and go to bed._

  
  


Phil is too tired to fall asleep, and he has too many thoughts to be able to think. He sees Dan, walking ahead and turning around to laugh at Phil tying his shoe. He sees the car, coming too fast and slowing almost, almost-nearly-but-not-quite enough. He sees just enough force push Dan over. He hears himself screaming Dan’s name and the not-even-half-second of fear, of terror, of years of happy memories that aren’t nearly a lifetime’s worth. He sees Dan hit the ground and he’s not sure if he hears it because he’s not sure if he can hear anything over his own voice at this point. 

The driver gets out and helps Phil get him out of the middle of the street. Phil can’t remember if anyone drives by, but if the street wasn’t busy before, it must not be now. 

Dan has so much left to do. They have so much left to do _together_. He _can’t_ die.  
  
A&E in London, even on the outskirts, is busy. Not nearly the busiest, but still busy. Phil doesn’t know what happens. He answers the questions he’s asked. (There’s a pause after “What is your relation to the patient?” before he quietly says, “Boyfriend.”) Phil doesn’t know how long it is. He looks at Dan’s face the entire time.  
  
How do you— who are you— what do you— When you’ve planned a future with someone in it and can’t imagine it any other way, not without changing who you are, what do you do when they’re taken from you and you don’t know if they’ll ever come back? 

Where are you when your home leaves, for however short or long a time?

  
  


* * *

  
  


ENDING ONE I’M SORRY ABOUT THIS ONE

The hospital had the man for four hours. To the man’s boyfriend, it felt like he’d passed over the event horizon of a black hole. Every second was infinity, the end drawing ever nearer yet always impossibly far away. The difference in reality was that the end wasn’t impossible. 

  
The thing is, it takes surprisingly little time to go from having a dead body to putting the remains the way in the ground, funeral and all. (Of course, the plaque takes longer to arrive.) You only need a week to put together and hold a funeral, and then you can do the burial within a few days. All in all, less time than the Patient from _The Black Parade_ had left to live. 

Of course, one might find it harder to do all this planning if death is unexpected. A coma leading up to it at least gives you time to find a good funeral home in the area.  
  


  
A week later, Phil feels up to making a video where he attempts to follow complicated origami tutorials (so that the focus won’t be on his face). Still, they notice. “Phil, if you need more time take it. Don’t rush your return for our sake <3” Continuing with AmazingPhil, Phil decides though, is the best thing to help him find his place without Dan. 

He does a part two the next week— part one wasn’t especially good, but in filming it, Phil felt he made a good choice for slowly coming back to being in front of a camera. A few days later, he’s just about to start filming an Animal Crossing video when Phil realized he never told them. 

  
  


Jamie gets the notification and goes from excitement to worry in a second. Phil took a three week break last month, and he hasn’t seemed fully okay in his two videos since. Looking at this video, they have a terrible feeling as to why. 

It’s titled “This year is rubbish.” That could indicate any video on the trash 2020 has dumped on the world, but it seems foreboding paired with the thumbnail: a recent picture of Dan that clearly is not meant for a thumbnail — his expression is candid and the image doesn’t even fit properly. Jamie refuses to think too much, and clicks. 

“You know, for some silly reason I half expected him to be the one playing the piano,” Phil says. The camera is on a funeral pamphlet for one Daniel James Howell, 1991-2020. Jamie’s breath catches in their throat. _This can’t be real. He can’t—_ “At his own funeral. That’s not that funny, is it?” The camera switches to Phil. He smiles weakly. “So hi guys. Dan’s… not coming back. Ever.  
  
“Uh… I guess I’ll start with how it happened. We were out for a walk, a nice masks-on thing around the block to get out of the house. He got hit by a car. The driver, their child was having anaphylaxis, I think. Went to A&E. He — Dan, not the kid, the kid had to wait longer than we did but ended up okay after staying the night. Dan was in a coma for four hours…” Somewhere in the back of their head, Jamie notices how considerate Phil is even in a crisis, but it’s buried under acres of shock.  
  
“I wonder if he knows. Everything.” For a second, Phil becomes expressive again and says, “Not like, ‘ooh I know all the secrets of the universe’ everything, just like” —Phil shrugs and goes back to his strange state, still and sad— “everything that mattered. That he’s… He’s dead. How much he meant to me, and also to so many of you out there. I mean, he _knew,_ but I wish I could have told him again.  
  
“So yeah. That’s why I didn’t upload those weeks. He deserved a better funeral in a better time, preferably far, far in the future. His family was there, but I couldn’t touch them— not in a weird way! just comforting — since mine had already hugged me. Oh yeah, I’m staying with my parents for a bit, that’s why the background’s different and I’m more Northern.” He shrugged. “Don’t really know what else to say. I literally just realized I should make this video so I didn’t plan anything.”

He paused. “A couple days before he said, just out of the blue, ‘In this day and age I think most reasonable people don’t have romantic proposals anymore. They just sit down and talk and agree that getting married is something they both want to do.’ 

“And I was like, that’s disappointing, if fairly sensible, and Dan just went ‘Really?’” Phil mimics a look of incredulity. “You probably know exactly what he was on about, but I had no idea! I just tried to continue the conversation! ‘Do you think they still propose romantically, like after, for fun?’ 

“He said, ‘If you want to,’ and then I was like, _‘ooooooh_.’” Phil smiles and shakes his head. “Stupid Philly. So anyways, we were technically engaged. I don’t know if he was going to propose to me, but I was going to. 

“…Should I cut this out? I guess it doesn’t matter if he’s dead now. Doesn’t seem that important. … Bye.” He waves. “See you next week.”

Jamie doesn’t want to cry over someone they’d never met, but parasocial relationships are funky things so they do anyways. 

  
  


55 days have passed since anyone has seen Daniel Howell alive, “anyone” mainly being Phil Lester. 

It’s hard, it really is, but it’s getting better. Most days he’s okay. Most days he talks to his mom and his dad and his brother and his friends and tries to accept things as they are. Most days he fails, but he’s getting closer. He even moved back into their— _his_ apartment yesterday.  
  
But sometimes, sometimes though, he’ll almost call for Dan to get something or he’ll almost ask Dan what he’s going to do today or he’ll almost send Dan a funny meme he saw or he’ll almost walk into the next room to see why Dan’s being so quiet or he’ll almost look over just to see Dan’s pretty face again and it’ll hurt because he isn’t there, _he isn’t there anymore_. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


ENDING TWO THIS ONE’S BETTER I PROMISE

They aren’t boys, but it feels strange to admit they’re men. One is tall, with dyed black hair he keeps up in a quiff. He wears bright colors to stand out against his pale skin. The other is also tall. He has curly brown hair and wears all black (most) all the time because he’s emo like that. He’s currently in a hospital bed.

He’s been there for the past seventeen days. Once every seven days, the other tall one is allowed to come visit him. He spends three hours by his side, talking to him and holding his hand. Then the boyfriend leaves the hospital.  
  
Today is not one of the few visitation days he has been allocated. Today is a day for sitting at home and reflecting on all the time they had together and hoping, praying that it can be enough if it needs to be. He scrolls through his camera roll and even rewatches a few of the videos they made together. It reminds him of how few moments they spent apart over the years. 

Somehow, seeing them young and happy together makes Phil hopeful that maybe Dan will be alright. Maybe. 

It’s a long, boring afternoon, until Phil’s phone rings. It’s the hospital. Phil answers it. “Hello, this is a call to update you on the status of Daniel James Howell,” the secretary on the other side says.  
  
“He’s awake.” 

She continues, “He can’t speak or move, and we don’t expect him to be able to see clearly at this stage, but he’s awake.”

After she hangs up, Phil goes back to his camera roll and looks at the last selfie they posted, 61 days ago now. They look young and happy and in love and alive and content and beautiful and beautiful together and like they wouldn’t fit anywhere else in the world except by each other’s sides and how could any universe be cruel enough to separate them, to cut this short? They weren’t made for each other, per say, but they made each other that way; it’s the difference between born and raised, nature and nurture. 

It’s like two matching rings: In the beginning, the metal could have become anything, anything in the whole wide world. But afterward, once they’ve been made to go together? Well, then it’s just silly to have them apart.  
  


* * *

BONUS SCENE IF WE REALLY WANT TO BE HAPPY (no I don’t know anything about recovering after being hit by a car, why do you ask?) 

Dan comes home with Phil. Home. Everything seems at home again. Their home (for now). Dan is home. Phil’s home is with Dan, and Dan is at home in his arms again.  
  
He has a broken leg and a broken arm (on opposite sides too), and he needs help walking before he can use crutches by himself. Not that Phil minds — he doesn’t want to spend a second apart from his boyfriend. He spends at least an hour, pressed into Dan’s side on the sofa, softly smiling into his neck. Dan pets him like a cat, by which I mean petting him head-down-to-back. Everything in the whole world is wonderful again. Breathing, together. Safe.

“So Dan got hit by a car!” is probably a bit too direct for the beginning of the video, but Phil can record something else later. His gaze slides to the right, a big smile on his face. 

“Yeah, I did,” Dan says from off-camera. “Fun times.” 

“And you broke an arm!” 

Dan sticks his right arm, in a cast, into the frame. “Yup.”

“And a leg!” Phil says, giving up on making eye contact with the camera to look at his boyfriend. 

“That I did.” He sticks his left leg into view, also in a cast. 

“And you were in a coma for 17 days and you got a concussion, so your brain is permanently messed up now!” 

Dan somehow manages to stick just his head into frame (and he keeps it in for the rest of the clip). “I want to object to the brain damage part, but I’m scared of it probably being true.” 

Phil teases, “Dan, you’re going to go back into your random phase.” 

“Dear god, I hope not.” Dan does not seem to be enjoying the prospect of returning to his rAnDoM XD LOL phase. 

And it’s really sweet how they just look at each other like that, like it’s the whole world right there. “Dan,” Phil says in a more subdued tone. “I really thought you were going to die. Searched up funeral homes in the area and everything.”

“That’s… really morbid, Phil," Dan replies. "Also you’re such a bad friend, I’m recovering from a car crash and you’re the one that’s sitting.”

“It was your idea to do it like this!” Phil protests. Dan cuts the video anyways, and they re-situate themselves so that Dan is filming Phil from the couch. They record a more full explanation there, and though Dan stays out of view, he keeps talking. Then Phil goes back to his room and films a proper introduction. He’s still smiling the entire time. 

  
  


It takes time, but things go back to normal. Everything seems so much easier to Phil when he knows Dan’s laugh and his smile and his face and his voice are still around, are still here, are still in his life. 

They talk a lot about the future. The future of their careers. Dan’s big project is getting close to being finished, and Phil’s been having a lot of good ideas lately, things he wants to do and try and mess around with and maybe fail at or maybe go right and become something really cool. He’s got some things that are almost ready to be shown off from previous ideas too, and some still in the mess around phase. 

The future of them together. Marriage is still very much on the table, though far away. In the present, moving is what they are occupied with. They’ve been very careful in visiting and traveling — a surprising amount of people still were trying to sell their houses in a pandemic. Now they’re almost ready to say goodbye to this place. 

The future looks like days together and days apart, but comfortable in the knowledge that they’ll both return home. The future looks like horrific failures and astounding successes, a journey to be taken with highs and lows and in-betweens. The future looks like a sunny fall afternoon, crisp and cool. 

It’s pretty clear that the future is bright. 

**Author's Note:**

> OH double reference  
> Title and "55 days have past since [I] last saw your face" from "Aeroplanes", with at least one other reference to the song in here somewhere. "Suddenly Missing You So Bad" is a song by Taiwanese rock band Mayday (五月天). 
> 
> Here’s the post w/ Phil leaning to the side when he’s laughing if you want to remember that DAN’S NOT DEAD HE’S NOT DEAD WHY DID I WRITE THIS DAN IS ALIVE AND WITH PHIL EVERYTHING IS FINE: here
> 
> DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I SPENT ON THAT RING METAPHOR? IT WAS PAINFULLY LONG. God, it seems so obvious but it’s so perfect. (My first thought (after all the other bad ones) was bracelets, but,,, marriage,,,,)
> 
> I was envisioning the phone call scene as a home phone situation but then I realized they probably only have cell phones lmao. I actually changed some of the wording haha.  
> Also I feel inspired to write out the whole proposal scene WITHOUT the death, may do that in the future, who knows?  
> btw if ur ever in the UK 999 is the traditional British equivalent of American 911 and 112 is the standard EU number. helpful info i learned but did not include.
> 
> Comments are much appreciated lol! This is one of my favourite things I've written, but it never did do that well.


End file.
